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Book Review: 'Sydney and Violet' by Stephen Klaidman

Sydney and Violet Schiff were close to Proust, helped Eliot through marital storms and fell out with Wyndham Lewis.

By

Allan Massie

Nov. 15, 2013 3:30 p.m. ET

There is no entry for Sydney Schiff in the Oxford Companion to English Literature; none either for his wife, Violet. Her elder sister, though, is remembered: Ada Leverson, author of half a dozen witty novels and the woman who bravely gave hospitality to Oscar Wilde between his trials and welcomed him when he was released from prison. Yet the Schiffs were prominent figures in the London literary world between the wars, and Sydney's novels were well regarded in their time. The couple were friends of Marcel Proust, and, as Stephen Hudson, Sydney translated the last volume of "Remembrance of Things Past" into...